Pause the Blessing

I grew up in church, so I was bilingual as a kid. I spoke English and church-ese. I still catch myself shaking hands after a service: "God bless you, God bless you, God bless you."

We all fall into church speak. "God told me." "God revealed to me." "I have a peace about it." It sounds spiritual. But sometimes it isn't the peace of God at all. It's just "I feel okay with it," and we take our preferences and stamp God approved on top.

That's exactly what happens in Judges 17. A man named Micah steals eleven hundred shekels of silver from his own mother. That's not a dollar for a candy bar. She pronounces a curse on whoever took it, he hears it, and he confesses. And what does she say?

And his mother said, "May you be blessed by the LORD, my son!" (Judges 17:2)

Sounds sweet. Sounds godly. Then she says she dedicated the silver to the Lord, and two hundred of those shekels go to make a carved image for the house. Micah sets up a shrine, hires a priest, and says:

Then Micah said, "Now I know that the LORD will be good to me, since I have a Levite as priest!" (Judges 17:13)

The words are right, but the worship is wrong.

Clones, not knockoffs

There used to be knockoff watches. You could feel the difference: the real one was weighty, the fake one felt chintzy. Now they make clones, the same metal, the same precision, so good a jeweler might not tell the difference.

Some of us have reached expert level in our Christian talk and our Christian look. To the neighbors, we're the most religious people on the street. But our families know better, God definitely knows better, and somewhere in our hearts we know better. That's Christian atheism: we say, we look, we seem, but it's cloned.

Check before you bless

Saying "God bless you" isn't the problem. When somebody sneezes, it's a little three-word prayer. The question is whether we reduce our faith to the little phrase. "You're in my thoughts and prayers." Are you actually going to pray?

Have you ever started eating and then remembered you forgot to say the blessing? Life works that way too. We start dating someone, send out the résumés, pack the bags, and then remember we probably should have prayed first.

King David wanted to build God a temple. He checked with the prophet Nathan, and Nathan looked at the plans and said, "Go, do all that is in your heart." Sounds spiritual. But that night God spoke to Nathan, and the next morning Nathan had to go back and tell David the answer was no. He'd blessed something God hadn't blessed.

As a pastor, I've been there. I got so excited about what was in front of someone that I said, "I can't see why God would be against it," but I never checked with God.

Here's the catch: you're probably the priest of your cubicle. People at work know you're a Christian. When their marriage is falling apart or their kid has gone wayward, they'll come to you to find out what God thinks. Be careful before you bless their mess.

This week, before you say "God's in this," pause. Where have you been putting God's name on something you never actually asked Him about?